pliant planks _sewn_ together with copper wire, which bobs about on the
surface of the water like a cork. At Pondicherry, as in all French
Colonial possessions, an attempt has been made to reproduce a little
piece of France. There was the dusty "Grande Place," surrounded with
even dustier trees and numerous cafes; the "Cafe du Progres"; the
"Cafe de l'Union," and other stereotyped names familiar from a hundred
French towns, and pale-faced civilians, with a few officers in
uniform, were seated at the usual little tables in front of them.
Everything was as different as possible from an average Anglo-Indian
cantonment: even the natives spoke French, or what was intended to be
French, amongst themselves. The whole place had a rather dejected,
out-at-elbows appearance, but it atoned for its diminishing trade by
its amazing number of officials. That little town seemed to contain
more bureaucrats than Calcutta, and almost eclipsed our own post-war
gigantic official establishments. On arriving at my French friend's
house, the fifth Madame Bayol, a lady of dark chocolate complexion,
and numerous little pale coffee-coloured Bayols greeted their spouse
and father with rapturous shouts of delight. Later in the day,
M. Bayol, drawing me on one side, said, "We have become friends on the
voyage; I will now show you the room which enshrines my most sacred
memories," and drawing a key from his pocket, he unlocked a door,
admitting me to a very large room perfectly bare and empty except for
four stripped bedsteads standing in the centre. "These, mon ami, are
the beds on which my four French wives breathed their last, and this
room is very dear to me in consequence," and the fat little
Marseillais burst into tears. I have no wish to be unfeeling, but I
really felt as though I had stumbled undesignedly upon some of the
more intimate details connected with Bluebeard's matrimonial
difficulties, and when M. Bayol began, the tears streaming down his
cheeks, to give me a brief account of his first wife's last moments,